Pilgrims

by Matthew Kneale

  But God’s blessing didn’t last long. As I chewed down my pie I saw the sky had suddenly turned dark though we were still far off from dusk, and as we stepped out from the shop, and I still had that sweet pork taste in my mouth, I saw a flash of lightning and a moment later there came a crash of thunder that made us all jump. ‘It’s not that far to the pilgrim hospital,’ Oswald said, ‘we can get there all right,’ but just then down came the rain in a rush, being the kind that soaks a fellow through in half a moment and never mind what gear he has on his back. The only shelter nearby was the eaves of a little house, though it wasn’t much and was less again for having a pair already standing beneath it, both of them in pilgrim clothes. They were a mother and daughter by the looks of them. The daughter was one to snag the eye, being very comely, with a sad, brooding countenance as she peered down at the ground from under her long black hair. They tried to make room for us but it was all we could do to stand back so the wet couldn’t drench our boots.

  If there’s one thing I can’t abide it’s a tempest. Then who loves them? I swear you can feel the devil right beside you, conniving to catch you with a strike of his lightning, or leave you half deaf from a roar of his thunder. Hugh and Margaret, Oswald and Jocelyn all looked feared and I was wishing I was under a proper roof or, better still, crouched under a good sturdy table. To make things worse the mother and daughter pilgrims seemed set on provoking the fiend to do his worst. They were hardly troubled by the storm and were gabbling away, or rather squabbling away, and not in God’s English but in some foreign tongue that I couldn’t understand one word of. Mostly it was the mother, who was as loud and talkative as the daughter was angry and hushed. This’ll catch Satan’s eye, no question, Sammo, I thought. Why can’t they just be quiet? And what are they doing here anyway? They should be going as pilgrims in their own foreign land, wherever that is, rather than making trouble here in ours. All in all I was more than happy when the storm finally died down and we left them there, bickering still.

  But it wasn’t for long as things turned out. The five of us took ourselves over to the East Gate Pilgrim Hospital as quickly as we might, before another storm could start up, and though the beds in the dormitory had a stench to them Oswald said we mustn’t mind as that was often the way at pilgrim hospitals, while the blessing was that they wouldn’t cost us a farthing, which was a true blessing so I thought. We’d hardly had time to claim a bed each when the hospital clerk, who was a smirking sort of fellow with a long grey beard, came up and told us he had two more that the priests had found to join in our party journeying to Rome. A moment later I heard footsteps on the stairs behind him. But instead of a great lord or a holy starveling like I’d thought we might get, it was the bickering mother and daughter. They looked as surprised as we did. The real wonder, though, was when they opened their mouths, because this time it wasn’t foreignness that came out but English, and so ordinary and natural that you’d never have thought they knew a word of anything else.

  It must be French, I guessed. I knew gentle folk spoke it, including even our Sir Toby and Dame Emma though I’d never heard them talk it out loud. And now I found out Jocelyn the advocate could talk it too, so they had a little gabble in it together, though the mother, whose name was Mary, was much smoother in it than him. And if I’d been a little anguished at her strangeness before, I saw she was a blessing now because I swear I never met anyone holier. She hardly said a thing without following it with a ‘please be to God’ or a ‘thanks be to Jesus’, or a ‘praise be to our loving Lord’, and the dear Virgin was never far from her lips. God will smile on us for that, Sammo, I thought.

  As for the reason for their going as pilgrims to Rome, this was so they might pray for the soul of Mary’s husband Edmund, though he sounded like he didn’t need much praying for. He’d died a few months back and had been as godly and virtuous a man as any you could meet, so Mary said, till the mournful day when he’d come down with fever and God had taken him from this earth. But though he’d been righteous, even the best stumbled from the true path once or twice, Mary said, while she and Helena, her daughter, both loved him so dearly that they couldn’t bear the thought of him spending even an hour burning in the fiend’s fires. So they were going to Rome to have Saint Peter spring him straight up to paradise.

  She said her Edmund had had a butcher’s shop which was the finest in all Gloucester City. That caught Jocelyn’s ear. ‘You’re from Gloucester?’ he said. ‘I’ve a cousin living there. He’s a shopman too, a cobbler. Dave is his name. A big tall fellow with a bad eye. You’ll know him, I’m sure.’ This Mary was a strange soul, though. Now she looked all miscomforted, though I couldn’t think why, as what was it to her if Jocelyn’s cobbler cousin with a bad eye was her neighbour? ‘I can’t say I do,’ she said, stumbling over the words. ‘Then we don’t know a lot of folk. We keep ourselves quiet, you see.’ Trust Hugh to make things worse. ‘Your Helena doesn’t look like a butcher’s daughter with those pretty little hands,’ he said. Now Helena, who hadn’t said one word all this while but had been looking down at the ground like she did, surprised us by speaking up. ‘I’m not,’ she said, quite sharply. Which had Mary confounded and tripping on her words all over again. ‘Helena’s father was my first husband, you see, who died when she was young,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t a butcher but a silversmith. But that was all long ago.’

  Then she started telling us how she’d worked as a gown maker before she met Edmund, and she’d had her own shop, and she owned a fine big house in Gloucester, too. She got no further, though, as then there were footsteps on the stairs and shouting. ‘I’m no cousin of yours, I’ll have you know,’ said an angry voice. ‘To you I’m Sir John of Baydon.’ Then up walked the clerk, looking none too cheery, and behind him came a big break-chest of a fellow followed by a little beakylooking woman, who I guessed was his wife, and a tall leek of a boy, who’d be their son. I know his kind all right, Sammo, I thought, who gets into a fury if he thinks he’s snubbed in the tiniest way. Back in Minster Rob William’s son was the same, and he once broke Symon Neil’s boy’s nose just because he’d said Rob had an ugly pig. The clerk had an answer for this fellow, though. Rather than show himself crabbed or scared he told him, ‘So you are, my good lord,’ saying it so polite and respectful that somehow it wasn’t respectful after all, and he gave a bow that wasn’t just low but was much too low. Sir John twitched like he’d have gladly whacked the man if he’d only had a rightful cause.

  I’d have found it all good sport and nothing more but then the clerk turned towards us, and I was just wondering if there was some law of the hospital he’d tell us about, but instead, with a little smirk on his face, he said, ‘May I introduce Sir John of Baydon, who’ll be journeying with you to Rome, and his wife Dame Alice and their son Gawayne.’ This is bad, Sammy, I thought, as God won’t smile on us if we have a troubler like this fellow in our party. But this was only the start of him, so we found. When Jocelyn asked him what took him to Rome he answered, and sourly, that he was going as a penitent, though it hadn’t been his choosing. ‘I was ordered to go by the archdeacon,’ he said. He’d got into a squabble with the abbey that held the manor next to his, over a piece of land that everyone knew was rightfully his, so he told us, but which the abbot had found an old deed for, which said it belonged to his monks. ‘Of course it was a forgery, as any fool could see,’ said Sir John, ‘got up by his cloisterers.’

  Not that that was what had brought Sir John into mischief. One morning he’d met the abbot by chance on the road, they’d fallen into discord and Sir John had punched him right on the nose. ‘None of it was my doing,’ Sir John told us, scowling at his remembrance. ‘It was all contrived. The abbot provoked me, of that I have not an ounce of doubt.’ As if I’d know either way? Though I could see it wouldn’t take much provoking to get this one into a fight. If it had been conspired by the abbot it had served him well, that was certain. Sir John had been called to the archdeacon’s court where he’d not only lost t
he piece of land they’d been squabbling over but had been ordered to go to Rome in penitence for smiting a churchman, and to come back with a script from the clerks of Saint Peter’s to show that he’d been. ‘That’ll have been the abbot’s notion,’ said Sir John darkly. ‘He’ll be hoping I never come home so he can steal some more of my land.’ ‘But you’re sorry, too,’ his little wife Dame Alice cut in, to remind he was penitent, seeing as he had to be. Though all she got from him was a grumpy, ‘Of course.’

  I’d have thought Hugh would have more sense than to rile a cur like Sir John but it seemed he couldn’t stop himself. ‘So how much land was it, my lord?’ he asked, and when Sir John growled, ‘A quarter of an acre of meadow,’ Hugh, though his Margaret nudged him hard with her elbow, raised his eyebrows. ‘Is that so, my lord? A quarter of an acre of meadow doesn’t seem much to go clouting an abbot over, let alone to journey all the way to Rome for. Why, I bought two acres myself just last winter and that wasn’t meadow but good growing land.’ Sir John gave him a scowl and looked like he’d gladly have given him something more. ‘It wasn’t about the land,’ he said. ‘It was about the rightfulness of the thing. Like I said, the deed was a forgery, clear as day.’ None of it would have happened, he said, if the case had come before a county judge rather than a church court. ‘It’s a disgrace,’ he said. ‘And to one who rode for his king against the Welsh, too.’

  So he’d been a soldier. Our lord in Asthall, Sir Toby, had taken a few from Minster to Wales and one of them, Rob son of Bob, never came back, though that wasn’t from fighting. He’d been kicked by his own horse. If Hugh was a riler I was the contrary. I always had been and I didn’t care if some folk called me soft. Knowing that I’d be walking alongside this break-chest of a fellow for many weeks I thought I might as well try to set him friendlier towards us. ‘So you fought in battles, Sir John?’ I asked. But there really was no pleasing the man. ‘I would have if I could have,’ he said, looking down his nose at my rags. Then he told us all about his family, which had been as noble as any in the land, he said. They’d come over with William the Bastard, and Sir John’s great-great-grandfather had fought with good King Richard to smite the Saracens and win Jerusalem back for God, but over the years they’d been robbed of their fortune, by Jew money lenders stealing with their cunning, by wicked fellows who’d lured his grandfather to play dice for gold, and by the extorcious cost these days of fighting gear. It had been two generations since any of his name had ridden as a knight and now they had only one manor. When he’d gone to Wales he’d hoped to catch the eye of his captain, or even of the king himself, with his bravery, so he might turn round the fortune of his family and set it to greatness once again, but there’d been no chance of that. ‘I spent the whole war on guard duty,’ he said sourly, ‘whacking the arses of a crowd of lazy stonemasons repairing a castle that our enemies had broken down.’ All he’d seen of his Welsh foes was the odd arrow that came whistling out of the trees, which were sent from too far away for them to prick any of his workmen. ‘More was the pity,’ Sir John said.

  God will like him even less for clouting one of his own abbots on the nose, I thought. And yet there was blessing here too, I saw, as for all the wrongs he’d done Sir John would keep us safe on the road. Though he’d never drawn his sword in battle he must know something of fighting, having ridden for the king. God’s watching for us, Sammo, I thought that night as I lay my tired head down to sleep. And how many we were now. I saw that the next morning when we walked out of the hospital, all scratching and itching ourselves, as the beds had had a good few biters. Ten of us we were now, I counted. We’d be a fine little crowd on the way. And Father Will had said we might have some more joining us later too.

  Before we could set off from Oxford we found a cobbler to stretch Margaret’s boots so they wouldn’t pinch her toes, and we stopped at the market to get some bread and cheese for the road. Then Oswald threw his bagpipes over his shoulder and let out a blast, and I hardly even cared how it sounded, I felt so joyed by the moment. Here I am, I thought, Tom son of Tom, of Minster village, stepping down the road, a pilgrim journeying to Rome City, for God and Jesus, for the Holy Ghost and sweet Mary, and for Sammy my cat.

  But it was Oswald’s pipes that got us into mischief. We were walking down the High Street back towards the East Gate when I noticed, crouching by the roadside, a big slutterbug with a tangle of dirty black hair hanging off his head, all in strings, and a bad arm dangling by his side. Don’t ask me how, but I knew he’d start on us and so he did. ‘That’s a sweet bit of music,’ he said, and then laughed too much like a wild man will. ‘Pilgrims, pilgrims,’ he said next, more singing than saying it, and giving us a smile that I didn’t like. ‘Who are you then?’ he called out. ‘And what dirty sins are you off to have pardoned?’

  Now I worried about having Sir John in our little fellowship, as I knew he’d not let this rest. Sure enough, he called out to the slutterbug, ‘Friend,’ in a voice that wasn’t friendly at all, ‘I urge you to watch your tongue.’ I don’t know if he’d ever come across wild men before, but I doubt it, as then he’d have known better. I’d seen one or two over the years, who’d come through the village begging for scraps, and if there was one thing I’d noticed about them it was that menacing only made them worse. Another thing was that they loved to tell you all about yourself, and sometimes their notions had a kind of demoniac truth to them. One had come through Minster and followed Bill Goddard round the green shouting out that he was a drunkard, which Bill was, and then telling Nicholas son of Roger that he was a soft scaredy cat who’d jump at a mouse, which was right too.

  Sure enough instead of being afeared of Sir John, the slutterbug got up and started following us, and as he went he told us all about our sins. ‘You,’ he called out, pointing at Oswald, ‘Badge Hat. You’re going for your sloth.’ Next, cackling away at his own demoniac cleverness, he pointed at Jocelyn. ‘And you, Cousin Wriggler, you’re going for lust.’ Which was right, of course. By then we were all looking round and wondering what we’d be, and not just us, as we had a little crowd of Oxford folk following after us and laughing. Hugh was Cousin Getgold and was avaricious, while his Margaret, who was Cousin Giveme, was greedy. Which I could see was true too, as by then even I knew that all his talk of having no money was a lot of truffle. But Mary and Helena made no sense at all. For all her righteousness Mary got godlessness and was Cousin Saracen while Helena was Saracen Princess. Though it was just a wild man babbling it got Mary troubled and she gave him an anguished look. I got off lightly as I thought, my sin being filth, which was no sin I’d ever heard of and certainly wasn’t one of the seven deadlies, while my name was Cousin Rags, which was right enough, no denying. As for the three Sir Johns, Dame Alice got highness, which I’d not heard of as a sin any more than filth, and was Lady Snorty Nose, while their boy Gawayne got sloth and was Prince Stink Fart, and Sir John himself got anger and was King Stink Fart.

  Now we’ll have a proper war, Sammo, I thought. Sure enough when the wild man called Dame Alice Lady Snorty Nose, Sir John turned and gave him a glare, calling out, ‘How dare you insult our ladies?’ But then Dame Alice tugged his arm. ‘Leave him be, John,’ she said. ‘There’s no honour here.’ Which was true enough, as if Sir John fought and won over a wild man with a bad arm he’d look a fool and mean too, while if he lost it would be worse again. Even Sir John saw it, and he told the slutterbug to fry in his own dirt and then turned and walked on. But I soon wished he hadn’t even said that, as this was what got us cursed. ‘The devil take you all,’ the wild man shouted now, grinning at us with his wide, popping eyes. ‘May the stones in the road swallow you up and drag you down to burn.’

  Nobody likes to be cursed, especially when they’re setting off on a journey to the ends of the earth, and we all fell quiet as we walked out through the East Gate and started up the steep hill beyond. All except Hugh. I swear he would rile the devil himself. ‘What a mad, crazed fellow he was,’ he said to Sir John, full o
f cheer. ‘Tell me now, as I can’t for the life of me remember, what was that foul thing he called your good, brave lad Gawayne? Stink breath, wasn’t it?’ Sir John, knowing he was being goaded but not seeing how he could counter it, answered with a growl. ‘No. It was Prince Stink Fart.’ ‘Terrible,’ said Hugh, frowning and shaking his head. ‘And your dear, noble wife? She was Lady Big Nose?’ ‘Lady Snorty Nose,’ said Sir John, looking like he might burst. ‘Wicked, wicked,’ said Hugh, squinting up his little eyes. ‘And you yourself were King Fart?’ ‘King Stink Fart,’ answered Sir John, bellowing the words. ‘Well, at least you were a king,’ said Hugh thoughtfully. ‘That’s something, I dare say.’

  After we reached the top of the hill the way kept level for a good distance till we reached Tetsworth. This was halfway to Wycombe where we’d stay the night, so said Oswald, who knew the road, and we stopped there for our lunch, sitting on the wall by the church. After that the road climbed and climbed into hills that were called the Chilterns, Oswald said, and when we finally reached the top, hungry for breath, we all sat down for a rest. It was a fine view all right and I swear it seemed like half of England was there beneath us. And that was the moment when all of a sudden I was in a sweat, my heart was racing and I was fumbling with my fingers, because my scrip wasn’t hanging down heavy like it should have been but was dangling light as pure nothing. Sure enough, when I loosened the string it was empty aside from one little farthing that had lodged itself in a corner. It was no mystery. The purse was made of a single piece of leather, sewed up one side, and the stitching had come away at the bottom. I suppose I should’ve known. Auntie Eva’s girl, goggle-eyed Mabel, who’d made it, wasn’t much of a stitcher.